Thank you for your Servais

Scott Servais has watched a lot of World Series games on TV. A baseball lifer, he has probably watched more than a thousand post season games in his 55 years. As a kid and later as a big league player, he surely dreamed of competing in an October Classic. Once his playing days were over, his fantasies would have turned to coaching on the biggest stage the sport has to offer. In recent years, as a big league manager on vacation, sitting alone on the couch with his hands tucked in the top of his sweats, I imagine him joining the conversation of the television broadcasters as starting pitchers heroically emerged from the bullpen on two day’s rest and relievers were stretched to unimaginable limits. Second-guessing pitching changes aloud to no one in particular, he would count the days until he himself might have an opportunity to fail as spectacularly as he did this week with the whole world watching.

When that stuff works, you’re a genius; when it don’t, you’re a bum. He just didn’t have enough patience, which is ironic (yes it is) because Scott Servais has been a very patient man.

Baseball requires patience. Getting through a 6-month season, not to mention a single solitary game (18 inning affairs notwithstanding) requires superhuman zen-like patience. Baseball is slow fun, and not for the easily distracted. But to amortize that standard-issue endurance over a 20-year rebuilding odyssey is really expecting a lot.

Of course Servais has only been on-board for the last 7 years of the 20-year plan. And to be fair, the club has stuck to the schedule for the most part– with Trader Jerry’s constant tweaking. Among the most intoxicating moments of the 2022 season, in fact, did not take place on the playing field at all, but rather over a cellphone in the back seat of a moving vehicle as the Mariners proudly declared themselves buyers at the trade deadline in late August, taking home the bazaar’s most coveted prize in starting pitcher Luis Castillo.

And despite how utterly demoralizing the last series of the season was, there was no doubt much triumph and bootie realized this year: a second consecutive 90-win campaign and a playoff berth for the first time in 20+, duh; the emergence of a gold glove caliber switch-hitting catcher who would rip more regular season homers than any catcher in Mariner’s history; a thrilling 14-game winning streak; the starbirth of a 21-year old rookie with power, speed and charisma not seen in these parts since you-know-who; young pitchers as far as the eye could see, maturing outing-to-outing, seemingly before our very eyes; the unimaginable delight that was Eugenio Suarez; 13 walk-offs; the best defense in the league; and a bullpen that impossibly seemed deeper & craftier than last year’s crew, despite lacking a designated alpha closer.

Still, with some fairly freak exceptions, no one the club could be relied upon to hit with much consistency. Ty France had a great first half, and the team hit the ball out of the yard in August. And like last year, they certainly had a flair for the dramatic, which sometimes makes a team appear as though they’re better offensively than they really are. The fact is they were a below average offensive team with only two other clubs ranking lower in team batting average.

What a galling and ironic bummer then, that from the first at-bat of their first playoff game in 20 years, they would actually hit well enough to advance to the ALCS and that it would be Servais’ shocking mis-management of the club’s strength that would betray it and send the players golfing while the Houston Astros celebrated between the mound and second base on the Mariners’ home diamond.

Remember when Scott was just sitting on the couch in the dark dreaming of managing in the post season? Well, that’s where he’ll be for the World Series again this year.

What use is it to have the best bullpen in the sport if you only ever give the ball to two guys? It was like a sick game of keep-away from a rested corps of brilliant relievers– quality arms just rotting on the vine, while Servais again went to Sewald and Muñoz when he didn’t have to. Certainly handing one of those two studs a baseball late is a great feeling for any baseball coach—they’d both been breathtaking all season long. But Servais continually dragged them out of the roles in which they had been effective. There may well have come a time in this post season, had the Mariners advanced, that those two would indeed be called upon to expand their respective comfort zones. But forcing them to do it so early burned them both out and stole any drama that might have been in it for higher-leverage situations later.

GAME 1, Toronto– Friday

As far as I’m concerned, the trouble started here. Castillo had been brilliant, pitching into the 8th. Do you need Muñoz there? If you’re planning on leaning on him all post-season, why not rest him on Friday and call on any one of your other perfectly wicked right-handers to get the last five outs, not knowing how much higher-stakes relief you were going to need on Saturday. Or Sunday.

“We just needed to slam the door and win Game 1 at any cost,” many would undoubtedly say, in Scott’s defense. Really? You need to stretch Muñoz out over two innings in the first game of the post with a 4-run lead?

GAME 2, Toronto– Saturday

Bobby Ray didn’t have it like he frequently didn’t down the stretch. Servais did what he said he was going to do if Ray got into trouble which was go to the pen — likely to Matt Brash if it was early. It was– and Brash came in and cleaned up nicely. Why then, is he gone after one inning? This is not game 7 of the World Series! The kid has been a starter and has starter mentality and stamina. Get a couple innings out of him. What’s the rush getting to Sewald, in the 5th? As it turned out, Sewald was off (huh) and things got worse. But I just don’t see how you don’t leverage Brash Matt in that situation. Instead you still have to use Muñoz and ultimately Kirby who you ought to have been saving to start later in the tournament.

The way the offense rallied late in game 2 can’t be accounted for. It was one of the most fantastic baseball games I’ve ever listened to and in some ways emblematic of the season as a whole. One impossible turn after another– fluke base hits dropping all over the place, a dramatic home run, wild pitches, all of it. It was like a delicious reward for all the other average or even boring innings we log as everyday fans all season long. The true essence of October baseball! But it doesn’t mean I wasn’t extra relieved that they didn’t have to play again on Sunday, because Servais had already used Muñoz two days in a row, once for two innings.

FUCK THE HOUSTON ASTROS

This seems like a pretty good time to bitch about the Houston Astros. I haven’t despised a professional sports franchise this much since those early 90s Buffalo Bills teams with Jim Kelly & Scott Norwood. I disliked the repeat Blue Jays in the early 90s too, because I didn’t like Labatt’s Beer (or Canadians) and Labatt’s owned the club. But these Astros are a different level. I dislike the word hate, but I hate their city and I hate their state. I hate their stupid cheater ballpark with its 315’ American Legion leftfield porch and toy train and I hate their fuckin’ uniforms. But most of all, of course, I hate the fact that they used technology to cheat and won a World Series because of it and that there’s no mechanism to negate it. I hate Alex Bregman and Justin Verlander but most of all I hate Jose Altuve. GOD I hate that guy. Part of it’s because he and they are so good, of course—but most of it is because they went to grotesque organizational & technological lengths to gain an indisputable advantage over their opponents and it worked. Yu Darvish is still pitching in this post-season (Padres & Dodgers tied at 2 in Game 4 as I write) against his old team. Darvish was the Dodger who got beat in game 7 of that 2017 Series that the Astros won by cheating, and his life (at least career) is totally different than it would have been had he won a ring with a Game 7 victory. Plus he’s Japanese which probably makes the dishonor worse. So instead of that glory, he’s a footnote. It’s so much worse than steroids. And there’s no asterisk.

Even Dusty Baker. I always loved Dusty Baker. Everybody did, which is why he was the only guy who could lead the Astros out of that dark corridor of blood cheating after they fired AJ Hinch. Everyone was like “… yeah, but Dusty…” Well, I got over that, rooting for a team in the AL West. I actually dipped a toothpick into the Nutella and left it out on the cutting board for Patti to find Tuesday afternoon. Fuck Dusty Baker…

GAME 3, Houston—Tuesday

I haven’t been to a place as dark as Tuesday afternoon for a long time. What a difference nine innings can make! The start of the game felt to me like the start of game 1 in Toronto, exploiting a pitcher you expected might dominate you. Base hits and free passes piled up and Verlander’s pitchcount rose. The Mariners appeared in complete control as Logan Gilbert was solid, leaving with a lead in the 6th. Again, Brash was first out of the pen and this time it’s not even a complete inning pitched, rather 2/3. Muñoz again is called on to pitch in a low-leverage situation and gives up a lead-narrowing homer.

How much can you expect out of one guy? Andres Muñoz might be my favorite player on this team—not just because he throws 103 w/ a 91mph ‘slider.’ But also because he’s such a peach. When I first heard him interviewed, I thought he sounded like Latka– a supersweet kid jazzed to be having this incredible experience. He didn’t know any of the canned jock phrases and just spoke from his heart with the innocence of an immigrant and the heart of jaguar. I love that he’s from Mexico and not from PR or the DR and he’s just my main man, that’s it.

After a shaky start to the season, he locked in and quickly became a virtually unhittable setup man for Sewald. But he was always a one-inning guy. He could give you one two days in-a-row, but never more than that. So when he was asked to face 26 playoff batters spread over five appearances in a week after he’d already pitched 65 innings during the season, well, he wasn’t as good was he? He was dominant in game 1, clearly toying with Blue Jays hitters. The next day he seemed tentative, pacing the perimeter of the mound, the team out of mound visits (solid management there). And then in game 3 as all Hell was breaking loose, he was genuinely vulnerable as Swanson, Festa & Boyd looked on. And then instead in comes Bobby Ray.

Of course this is the move Scott Servais will be remembered for. Giving Bobby the ball on two days rest after his worst outing of the year to face the second-most feared hitter in the American League is the move most will remember as the turning point in not only the game but also the series. Servais had a left-hander in the pen in Boyd (and one in Seattle in Marco). Instead he chose to drag Ray out of his role and insert him where he did not belong and the result will go down in history for those who give a damn.

I’d like to say I don’t blame Scott. I’d like to say that after all those games on the couch dreaming of iced arms and bloody socks, that making a risky high-stakes post-season pitching change was a privilege he’d earned. I would like concede that the analytics were solid and that, though unorthodox, handing Ray the ball was a wise move. I would like to stand behind my guy and say all that, but I can’t. I do give a damn and I can’t say that.

I couldn’t say almost anything at all for 24 hours after that pitch in fact. Before Alvarez had crossed home plate, I’d hurled my cap and hissed an oath— crossing the living room from the porch and stomping into the basement where I pulled the covers of the spare bed up to my chin and stayed until after dark. Patti got some Thai food and I picked at some basil fried rice before going back to bed, sick in my guts over losing a baseball game in which I had not even played.

GAME 4, Houston—Thursday

By Thursday I was at least verbal again, but I still didn’t have much appetite for the game. I hadn’t looked at any baseball media Wednesday and didn’t even listen to the two National League games because I couldn’t take a chance on hearing those ESPN douchebags mentioning the Mariners’ epic collapse from the day before. I skipped pre-game and tuned in just before first pitch, well out of my own gameday routine.

My hopes were low. I believed any opportunity to prevail over the Astros was only going to show itself once, and briefly. Chasing Verlander early and O-fering Altuve where not gaps we were going to get a second chance to exploit. I still felt good about Luis, and I knew we had strong arms ready in the pen. Not that Servais still had any inclination to use them, letting Castillo throw more than 100 pitches for the second time in as many starts while the right-handers in the pen chewed and spit. And then who does he finally bring in, after leaving Castillo in long enough to surrender the lead? Muñoz, of course.

And here’s the hell of it. Here’s the piece that burns my butt as much as anything else. With his Big Guy on the mound in the bottom of the 8th and the Mariners trailing by only one, with two outs and Peña on first– what does Servais do? Without a base open, he motherfucking walks Alvarez to put a runner in scoring position. And of course Bregman singles that run in.

Why are we even doing this in the first place? Why are we even bothering to play the games? Isn’t this the situation that all true competitors long for? These matchups? Scott’s ridden this guy hard and practically exclusively for a week, asking him to the do the impossible time and again. And then you get down to the point where the season is almost literally on the line and you’ve got that guy on the mound when the Astroturf Monster comes to the plate setting up the epic showdown that everyone wants to see and you walk him? With a runner already at first base?! If you were going to do that, why wouldn’t you have done it the game before and let Sewald (or another game right-hander) pitch to Bregman? It’s stupid.

GAME 5, Seattle—Saturday

What can be said about this game? The patient baseball people of Seattle had been rewarded with a home playoff game for the first time in 21 seasons and you can’t say we didn’t make the most of the pageant. Oversold out. Beautiful Indian Summer day. Felix throwing out the ceremonial (caught by Franklin Gutiérrez!). And then an 18-inning pitcher’s staredown. Two entire game’s worth of outs without a run scoring. Couldn’t hardly script it any better than that.

Well, actually you could. You could write in a bottom frame homer by any one of a number of guys. They all had their chances, literally a whole second game’s worth of at-bats. Patti thought Servais shouldn’t have run for Suarez in the 9th, but I didn’t have a huge problem with that. Servais was playing aggressive, trying to win a baseball game. Who could have guessed we’d miss Gino’s bat for that long? I thought for sure they’d walk it off in the 9th.

But they didn’t. Not in the 10th either. Inning after inning the relief pitching came through—most of them in their first appearances of the post. Ultimately it was the left-hander Murfee who gave up the only run of the game on a homerun to the guy you always had to retire because he was batting in front of Alvarez. But no runs through 17? I’ll take that all autumn every autumn and I didn’t have an issue with any of Servais’ moves, although in reality he didn’t have many choices by that point, did he? He ended up stretching Brash out finally, and it looked like he wasn’t going back to Bobby if it had gone to the 19th.

But the fact remains that the Mariners didn’t score for the last 18 and in fact the last 23 innings of the season. Also ruefully emblematic.

PLAYING THE GAME THE RIGHT WAY MY EYE

One of the unfortunate results of the introduction of instant replay in baseball is that there’s nothing to argue about anymore. The historic antics of MLB managers furious about blown calls were what made baseball unique. You never saw a basketball coach take off his tie and vein-up in the face of a referee over a missed foul. No football coach ever sarcastically covered the near sideline with dirt to make his point that the opposing receiver was out-of-bounds when he caught the ball. Hockey coaches don’t tip over nets to protest icing calls. Nope—baseball was the only sport in which frequently overweight late-middle aged men wearing the same uniforms as their players would regularly go berserk on the field surrounded by four smirking umpires with whom he’d probably share a drink later at the hotel bar. It was high sports theater, starring malcontents named Lou, Earl and Billy.

Anymore someone might yell a magic word from the dugout in protest to the strikezone and once in a long while a manager will get rung. Sometimes he’ll emerge from the dugout for a few heated words, ‘getting his money’s worth’. But largely this entertainment aspect is gone from the sport, in favor of getting the call right. And of course there’s something to be said for that– but at the same time, I miss the human element. And I dread the day when even the strikezone is no longer determined by an imperfect man, but rather a billion-dollar specially-programmed perfect computer machine.

One thing that can still result in some old-fashioned baseball fun though, is the beanball. The hit batsman is part of the game and always has been. Pitchers must pitch inside to be effective, and some batters (the good ones) crowd the strikezone more than others. And in this battle for the plate, sometimes a guy gets hit by the baseball. Usually he rubs the spot where the impact was made and jogs to first base without any further discussion. But if he’s already been hit once that series, or if one of his mates got hit yesterday, or if one of his pitchers hit one of their guys the inning before, well then maybe there is some glaring. Even some words. At this point the catcher usually makes a point of getting in between the pissed off batter and his own pitcher, but if things go much further than that then guys are going to start coming out of both dugouts and eventually the bullpens. There are rarely any real punches thrown in baseball ‘fights’, and usually order is lazily restored and the game moves on. But not always.

The Mariners have been involved in a few of these over the years, like every team has. (I was sitting down the first base line at the Kingdome the night catcher John Marzano punched the Yankees prized whiner Paul O’Neil in the face at home plate. Epic…) Seattle was in one this season, in fact, in that shameful mess in Anaheim. That was a predetermined decision to throw at our guy, a situation where the Angels actually changed their lineup on gameday so that their starting pitcher could afford to be ejected after throwing at Jesse Winker. It was a little heavy-handed on Angels’ manager Phil Nevin’s part, because the whole thing was in reaction to an inside pitch to Anaheim star Mike Trout the night before—a pitch that wasn’t really even that close. Trout made a big deal of it and so his manager was naturally obliged to back him up and that meant throwing at a Mariner the next day.

I don’t blame Nevin for that, really. Who I do blame is Scott Servais—for not responding. Every pre-schooler knows two wrongs don’t make a right. But in baseball, sometimes you just have to knock a fucker down. And Servais going to the podium after that game and saying ‘we play the game the right way’ is just lame.

An even better example of this weakness on the Mariner manager’s part goes back to the Astros. For starters, I believe that Jose Altuve should be hit routinely in the wallet on the first pitch of every game, just based on the bullshit cheating jive detailed above. But when you have a chance to really send a message but don’t because it’s not the right way to play the game, then I have a problem with that.

It was the last day of July and the two teams were facing each other for the final time in the regular season. As usual, the Astros had gotten the better of the Mariners over the course of the year, and not only had Jose Altuve not been hit in the ass with the first pitch of every game, Mariners hitters had been knocked down a conspicuous amount by Astros pitchers, including prized rookie Julio Rodriquez getting hit twice in the same spot in consecutive at-bats a few weeks earlier. Now the last game of the year between the two teams was going into extra innings.

(One of the other new neutering rules in baseball since Covid is that extra innings begin with a runner at second base. Ostensibly this is to save pitching staffs from being overworked, but it’s at least in-part an effort not to overtax the short attention spans of American sports fans spoiled by the speed and violence of professional football: 9 innings is already a lot to expect– no sense in chancing more than 10.)

Anyway, to begin the bottom of the 10th there was an automatic runner on second base and Jose Altuve happened to be leading off. With first base ‘open’ it was a logical move for Servais to intentionally walk the dangerous Altuve in order to set up a double play, pitching instead to rookie Jeremy Peña. In what was likely to be the very last inning of 19 games between the two division rivals, Scott Servais had a dream opportunity to hit Jose Altuve with a fastball right between the letters. He was going to walk him anyway. But instead, he put him on first base non-violently, Peña hit a basehit in the gap, and the Astros walked off the Mariners off 3-2.

MANAGER OF THE YEAR MY ASS

I don’t have a vote, but if I did I would not cast it for Scott Servais for American League Manager of the Year. I absolutely would have last year, when expectations were lower and Servais had not yet had a chance to piss and shit himself in the playoffs, like he did this year. But you only get one chance to sneak up on people. Terry Francona did a killer job this season with an even younger club in Cleveland—a squad that rose above the presumed division champion Chicago White Sox and which took the October-mad New York Yankees to a 5th game in their ALDS. In their first year as the Guardians, that is the team who made the biggest late and post-season impression—not the Mariners. In my opinion, Scott Servais should feel lucky to still have his job, let alone be anointed as the best boss in the league.

NO MORE HOLY SMOKES

And while I’m at it– sitting here in my underpants eating ice cream and cleaning house– I’m firing Rizzs too.

When Dave Niehaus dropped dead at his barbeque during the offseason of 2010, I knew this day would come. The club had been working Rizzs into a more prominent booth role for several seasons, in anticipation of 75-year-old Niehaus’ imminent retirement if not unexpected death. As a radio listener, I couldn’t imagine Mariner’s baseball without Dave. But in the end, the transition I’d dreaded so acutely actually turned out to be fairly smooth– and it wasn’t long before I was hanging on Rizzs’ every word the same way I’d relied on Niehaus.

Rick Rizzs is a great broadcaster. A baseball man and a radio man through and through, he’s a true pro with lightening reflexes, a smooth voice, and a deep knowledge of and respect for the game. He has decades of experience, and when he breaks in at the top of a broadcast or the bottom of an inning, I feel safe—like a loyal friend is watching out for me and that even if the team loses the game at-hand or ultimately falls short of winning the World Series again, things are going to be OK. I know the inflections and patterns of his voice as well as I know my own.

But he’s also very old-school. He comes from a genre that never—under any circumstances—has an overtly negative thing to say about anything or anybody. And I really believe that sometimes you just have to call a fig a fig. Eventually, the euphemisms get old, and Rizzs’ bottomless brightsiding has started to really get to me– especially this post-season when balls were dropped. In fairness it’s not the play-by-play guy’s job to call out managerial fuckings up, but I guess I’m just growing weary of what an insufferable honkey he is.

And there’s youth behind him. I think Hill and Goldsmith are great together and Sims is incredible too of course. Even Blowers was in the radio booth for a lot of the post, which was odd because he’s always been TV only. It’s actually a bit like the pitching staff in that they have all this talent and it’s hard to get everyone enough innings. I don’t know what their system is or where guys go when it’s not their turn on the mic. But there’s a lot of shuffling that goes on in the Northwest Chevy Broadcast Booth. And it seems like maybe the crew is one voice long.

I may well be imagining this, but I actually think that Gary Hill and Aaron Goldsmith have a bit of a plan for forcing Rizzs out. Occasionally it’s all three of them on hot mics and those two guys are like mischievous kids riffing on some abstraction while Rizzs plays the heavy, bringing things back to the action on the field. Sometimes they’ve strayed too far off-topic and he’s right in reining things back in. But more often than not he just sounds like somebody’s mom warning them not to make him pull the car over. I swear I have heard them plant shit in his path that he struggles with, like video game references that he doesn’t know how to respond to, while they yuck it up ungodly. It’s 2-against-1 and he ends up sounding dated.

And he absolutely has lost a step where his calls are concerned. It was the same for his mentor during Dave’s last few years, where he’d break out a SWUNG ON AND BELTED on what turned out to be a fairly routine fly ball to right. Failing depth perception. Transposed ballparks, wrong guys in the lineup, 1 out not 2. Patti actually corrected Rizzs on a count in the second wildcard game “it’s 3-1, not 2-1, Rick” she said, absolutely correct. I can’t imagine a harder job than being a baseball announcer, and as I say—I have the utmost respect and reverence for Rick Rizzs. But, you know, if it’s up to me? Gold Watch.

Dipoto can stay. I think he’s kind of a patient genius and has steadily built this club into the contender it is. Pragmatic development on the farm and a few free agent signings, but with a couple of notable exceptions, the deals he’s made have not been huge. It’s like success by a thousand trades, each one making the team 2-3% better seemingly without much notice. And then fairly abruptly after 5 years of quiet dealing, you’re super good.

One thing Jerry deserves the spanking machine for, though, is letting Julio into the All Star homerun derby. Whether it was his decision directly or whether that too falls to Servais—someone needed to hike that idea as soon as it was hatched. We oughtn’t have expected the kid himself to do it. That’s not his job. He’s 21 years old and a sudden darling. He’s going to say YES to any idea floated his way because he’s flattered and confident and hungry. But one authoritarian or another needed to tell the league thanks but no when that idiotic plan was broached. It’s a lame contest in the first place—typical of the general dumbing down of the sport. It should be a bunting derby. But putting your prized prospect into a situation where he’s going to swing his wrist swollen trying to hit 30 home runs in 3 minutes is just poor management. Julio got some screentime and that certainly didn’t hurt his and thus the Mariners’ brand. The national media finally had a face to add to their collages, legitimizing the club’s continued existence. But it wasn’t good for the team, as the kid sat out sore a week’s worth of games after the break, a stretch in which the Mariners went 2-3 in close games. It’s easy to shrug tough losses in July, but one or two of those games going the other way might have made a big difference in how things played out in October. It’s about seeding.

BUT WHAT DO I KNOW?

I should be ashamed of myself, banging on Scott Servais, Jerry Dipoto and Rick Rizzs. I don’t know fuck about shit– meanwhile these three have 100 year’s experience working in the game. As a paying fan it is my luxury to critique if not criticize, however, and not only is it (mostly) in good fun, but I also recognize no one’s ever going to read this– especially the manager, general manager and the voice of the Seattle Mariners.

And it was a good year. When you play up or down to your competition, the game is always close and that makes for late-inning drama, night after night. It’s a talented young core of players who genuinely appear to like each other and who seem committed to winning in Seattle. 2022 was no 1995. But it was a good year…

I do have a couple of concerns about the future, however:

• Left field. This position has been a struggle in Seattle practically since Tom Paciorek left. I assume the Jessie Winker experiment will be abandoned and I don’t think that cunt Jerid Kelenic is the long-term solution, either. Hopefully Jerry can get something for him. I was surprised he didn’t have value at the deadline this year
• Robbie Ray. He did not finish strong, including his poor showing in the post. We’re committed to him for several seasons, but I’ve never trusted him entirely and we’ll need a solid left-hander if Marco is on his way out
• Marco Gonzalez. He truly is a bulldog and gutted it out this year even when every pitch of every outing seemed like such a struggle. It made me feel bad that he was left off the post-season rosters and that’s not a great sign for his future
• JP Crawford. His contract extension at the start of the season was a feel-good development for the team, guaranteeing his excellent presence and glove in the lineup for years to come. It would be awesome if he hit better than .243
• Kyle Lewis. What on Earth has become of Kyle Lewis and will he even be part of the future here? What about Justus Sheffield? Or Evan White?

That’s probably enough for today. I need to tune in Game 3 of the ALCS so I can hear Jose Altuve ground out, extending his 0-21 hitless streak. Go Mariners!